


What Do You Call a Missing Wolf?

by cognomen, MayGlenn



Series: A Very Supernatural Starsky & Hutch [1]
Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Pre-Series, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Werewolf Reveal, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 20:26:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14678850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: There’s just something not quite right about his roommate. Kenneth Hutchinson, a mouthful and a half and pretty good-looking if Starsky were looking, is the biggest bookworm Starsky’s ever met. And something else is up with him, but Starsky can’t put his finger on it. He keeps suspecting there’s some kind of dog in the room when he’s not in it, but he’d be hard pressed to tell you how any of the slightly long golden hairs that he keeps finding convinces him of that.“So, some guys and me are going out later on,” Starsky offers, figuring he can probably lure Hutchinson out and get to know him a little better. “You wanna come? There’s a go-go bar up the street.”“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Hutch says, trying to sound aloof because he’s kind of hopeless at talking to guys he has a crush on. “Can’t tonight, though. I’ve got a date.”Hutch doesn’t have a date, of course, except for the date he has every full moon. He’s with a new pack since moving down to Bay City, and they’ll probably try to set him up with someone tonight, but it’s kind of hard to use contraception when you’re a werewolf, so he doesn’t like to hook up randomly. After Vanessa, though, it will be nice to get out and meet other wolves.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Answer: a where wolf

There’s just something not quite right about his roommate. Academy didn’t leave Starsky much time to think about it; it isn’t, in fact, all that different from the army. Up when they tell you, drill when they tell you, lights out at 10pm and not a minute later.

The coursework is different, but only in that there is coursework instead of endless firearm drills, marches in formation, helicopter loading and unloading drills, the whole nine yards. In truth, he’s still decompressing from all that, unpacking from his one tour and two extensions. It hasn’t left him gunshy, at least.

Kenneth Hutchinson, a mouthful and a half of a name and tall and pretty good-looking if Starsky _were_ looking, is the biggest bookworm Starsky’s ever met. And something else is up with him, but Starsky can’t put his finger on it. He keeps suspecting there’s some kind of dog in the room when he’s not in it, but he’d be hard pressed to tell you how any of the slightly long golden hairs, paler even than his roommate’s blonde hair, that he keeps finding convinces him of that.

He also hasn’t _seen_ a dog. Just the plant, then the plants plural, and now a half a small jungle of cuttings. Whatever that one is that keeps sending out creepers, Starsky’s pretty sure it’s got his number.

“So, some guys and me are going out later on,” Starsky offers to his enigmatic room-mate, figuring he can probably lure Hutchinson out and get to know him a little better. They’ve still got six months left of their eight, anyway, and Starsky could stand to see him loosen up at least once. “You wanna come? There’s a go-go bar up the street.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Hutch says, trying to sound aloof and uninterested because he’s kind of hopeless at talking to guys he has a crush on. “Can’t tonight, though. I’ve got a date.”

He doesn’t have a date, of course, except for the date he has every full moon. He’s with a new pack since moving down to Bay City, with a distant cousin his only link, and they’ll probably try to set him _up_ with someone tonight, which, whatever, but it’s kind of hard to use contraception when you’re a werewolf, so he doesn’t like to hook up randomly. After Vanessa, it was kind of nice to get out and meet other wolves, and the change of scenery was even better.

If Hutch was going to worry about impressing anyone besides his curly-haired, loud-mouthed, distressingly muscley ex-army roommate, it was going to be one of his new pack elders, a police chief by the name of Harold Dobey—and in a very different way, to be clear. Impress him, and hope a little nepotism could impress him into a job once he was through the Academy. Impress Dave Starsky—well.

Hutch beams up at his roommate. “You have fun, though. I’ll see you in the morning.”

There’s that _smile_ , which always takes Starsky off-guard. Normally he’d be put off by someone who was clearly so detached and bookish, but every time he starts to gravitate a different direction, Hutch brings out that smile. Then again, he’d just said he had a date.

“Alright, well,” Starsky says, getting himself together to go out—a quick pass of a comb through his hair, which was trying its best to escape the regulation haircut in a mess of curlie-cues that drives him nuts. “Good luck with your date, huh? Remember to hang a sock on the doorknob if you’re gonna need the privacy.”

Starsky gives him a roguish grin, as if he’s not trying to fish around for information as to how serious Hutch is about his girlfriend.

“Thanks, but, ah, I think we’ll go out,” Hutch says, enamored of the way Starsky moves, never mind how he _smells_. “But I’ll remember.”

 _That_ , is of course, what really has Hutch eyeing his roommate like he’s a fat deer (though he supposes he needs a new metaphor, there aren’t exactly deer down here)—he’s so _nice_ , and friendly with everyone, and _interested_ in everyone, and accommodating, and generous. Not the kind of person Hutch expects to have returned from Vietnam, honestly. He has a sudden strong desire to join him at this bar, to get to know him better.

“Ah!” Hutch blurts out as Starsky is about to shut the door, and stammers stupidly, and blushes. “But, ah, um! It’s not ‘til later tonight. I told her I’d pick her up at 8:00 tonight, so, could I go with you until then?”

The sun sets late in the summer, after all.

Starsky leans back in the door, his expression and attitude changing from ‘waiting as requested’ to one of pure, almost puppyish delight when Hutch offers to go along. “Hey, that’s two hours from now. Plenty of time, if you don’t think she’d mind you coming from the go-go club.”

A cock of the eyebrow, a single wiggle of the hips, indicating ‘go go club’ to mean exactly what go-go club’ has always meant, as if there were any doubts previously, and Starsky beckons him along.

“No, uhh, no,” Hutch says, realizing he needs to get up and get ready to go, which is hard to do when Starsky is watching him. “I don't think she'll mind.”

“Hey, it’s great. All the popcorn you can eat. Something about salt and beer just makes a great match, huh?”

“Sure!” Hutch says, though as a rule he tries to stay away from anything unhealthy when he has the frontal lobe capacity to think through his food choices. He gorges himself enough when he's a wolf (albeit usually on lean meat) that he could probably not ever eat as a human and be just fine.

He puts on boots and a cowboy hat to complete his “going out” ensemble, and stands there for Starsky to get a look at him. “This okay?”

Starsky, still not entirely sure that he believes (as a New Yorker) that Minnesota counted as part of the midwest, nonetheless his roommate can work the cowboy hat and the shy smile thing enough that Starsky figures it’s fine.

“Yeah, looks good, cowboy,” Starsky says, without any hint of teasing. He holds the door for Hutch and lets him out into the summer evening heat. From here, where the academy’s at, they can smell the ocean. That’s always been reassuring to Starsky. “You know I figure this has gotta be the safest go-go bar in the city, right? Who’s gonna rough up the girls with a house full of wannabe cops?”

“Anyone who wants their misdemeanor case thrown out on a mistrial, since we're only cops in training,” Hutch points out, before he realizes him being smart sounds like he's being smart- _mouthed_ , and probably kills the mood. “But, ah, you know, we can look after the girls, anyway.”

Hutch chuckles nervously, not only because of how Starsky looks at him. He feels a little like prey himself. “You're good at that, I bet.”

“Looking at, sure. Looking after, well… as of yet undetermined,” Starsky answers truthfully, not sure why he would admit this so willingly, but Hutch is easy to talk to. “Anyway, things are too unstable right now for me to think about anything more than a hookup. Maybe when i graduate?”

He holds the paneled door open for Hutch, letting out a blast of warm air and music, plus the sort of perfume-sweat-excitement scents that always fill places like this. He grins, shouting a greeting to the small group of guys waiting for them.

“Well, if you look after them half as well as you look after me,” Hutch began, not failing to notice that Starksy had opened every possible door for him, like for a date—or maybe he was just that nice a guy?—but they were interrupted by Starsky spotting the boys they’re supposed to meet. Hutch knows them, too, about as well as he knows Starsky. He really needs to go out with the Academy guys more often, clearly.

“This is it?” Starsky asks the group, when he and Hutch are settled.

“Nope, here come the girls!”

Oh, right. There were women in the Police Academy with them, too, Hutch remembers as a trio of them joined the group, though because they had a separate dorm, Hutch didn’t get much chance to interact with them. Maybe he was just being a loner, though, as the only werewolf in the Academy. A walking stereotype.

Well, not anymore.

“Hey, you want to dance?” he asks one of the girls with dark, curly hair, pointing to a small space cleared for dancing, in the center of the tables in front of the stage. He jogs Starsky’s elbow, too, and realizes he’s got the same hair as this woman. Maybe Hutch is a little obsessed. “We should do some dancing!”

“Let me drink at least one beer first,” Starsky says, clearly concerned about being embarrassed by his dancing. He drinks down a pint glass quickly and then follows Hutch and the girls onto the floor, mixing in with the go-go dancers there to keep the crowd excited. The music is loud but good, and Starsky dances with a couple of girls who all wind up gravitating away either directly to Hutch (doesn’t that just figure) or to the other cops. He’s having a good time, anyway.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were such a party animal after all,” Starsky has to lean in and almost yell to be heard over the music. “How come you don’t come out more often?”

“I don’t know!” Hutch laughs, excusing himself from dancing with a pretty blonde to work his way back to back with Starsky. “Can I buy you a round before I have to go?”

He tells himself it’s because he just doesn’t know his roommate all that well yet. And it’s true, he doesn't know much about Starsky except for how how fantastic he looks coming back from the showers.

“Sure, but just one round, we both gotta get up in the morning,” Starsky says, obviously pleased with the attention from Hutch. There’s a whole club full of girls—but then again, he said he had a girlfriend and had come out anyway. Probably it was so that they could get to know each other better.

“Tell me about it,” Hutch groans. He never looks forward to the day after the moon, spent running around all night like a crazy dog. He doesn't know why he can't get his wolf self to just stay in and sleep sometimes—not that he can now that he has a roommate, but...

Starsky gets a glass of water with his next beer, perching on the edge of the chair with his elbows on the table. “Okay, so, why all the plants? The rest I get, but not the small jungle.”

“The...rest?” Hutch asks, sounding immediately guilty. God, he hopes they teach him how to _lie_ in the Police Academy, because he’s terrible at it, which is bad for any werewolf. “I—ah, I mean. I just. I like plants?”

 _As long as the wolf doesn’t try to eat them_ , Hutch adds to himself. But that hadn’t happened since he was a pup.

“The rest, you know; reading all the time, being kind of an introvert,” Starsky uses the big word he’d learned in academy. That’s one thing he likes better about this training than basic training; the schoolwork actually challenges him.

“Oh.” But this is supposed to be about getting to know Starsky, so Hutch ventures, “What kinds of things do you like? Uh. I mean, hobbies, and...”

Hutch laughs, nervously playing with the label on his beer. “Sorry, I’m bad at this. It’s my fault we haven’t really talked yet. I guess I’m just—shy. Comes off as aloof.”

Hutch doesn’t know why he’s telling Starsky all this.

“Hey it’s okay,” Starsky says, with a shrug. “It’s a lot to get used to all at once. Especially with all these rowdy guys.”

He jerks a thumb at the dancefloor, where two of the guys are trying to pull a complicated prank involving shoelaces on a third. Pretty typical behavior of people blowing off steam after working all day.

“As for what I like,” Starsky continues. “Uh, cars. Dancing. I’m not so bad at basketball. I like any food that’s not an MCI ration. Guess I’m still figuring the rest out.“

Hutch smiles, impressed, like Starsky’s got a Manly Card and is ticking off each box, but not in a performative, jarhead kind of way: like he genuinely enjoys these things. Starsky looks like he enjoys a lot of things. Like he's fun to be around.

“Do you cook? When we're not crowded into shared living space like sardines, I mean,” Hutch wonders, hoping for a point of commonality there.

“Sure. Well, some. I’m still learning to cook normal food,” he says, with a faintly embarrassed grin. He’s not sure exactly how much he wants to admit about his upbringing yet. Some folks were put off, but ‘soldier’ was a pretty good cover for all the rest. “I do a pretty good breakfast. Bacon in the pan first, then fried eggs in the bacon fat. It’s divine.”

His eyes go a little distant just thinking about it, and he realizes he hasn’t had anything for dinner. “Hey, it’s a little loud in here. Can I walk you back? I’m gonna get a hamburger on the way in. Thinking about food always makes me hungry.”

“I, ah,” Hutch stammers, checking his watch. It's cutting it close, but he really wants to be with Starsky longer, so against his better judgment, says, “Yeah.”

He wishes Starsky were going on the prowl with him. He already feels like he fits in with him. “Sure. There's a place where—I try to eat vegetarian when it’s convenient—and there's this place with a mean bean burger. Regular burgers, too.”

“Well you can just drop me off if you wanna splash on some fresh cologne for your date,” Starsky says, amiably. “I really don’t mean to make you late.”

“No, no, you won't. I don't mean to make _you_ miss out on the dancing,” Hutch says bashfully.

Starsky pauses to wave to the guys they’re leaving behind, having a brief conversation with his buddy John about going out to get some food, before heading out with Hutch, tucking his hands in his pockets. Starsky hasn’t fooled around with a guy since high school, hadn’t really thought about it. He thinks about it a little, now, watching Hutch move with confidence and grace past the tangle of dancing bodies, but he figures he’d like to be friends with the guy more.

Well, and the small problem of he already has a date, that’s at least one thing in the way. “So you said you’re a vegetarian? Any particular reason why, or you just really like salad?”

Hutch laughs, surprised by the guy's humor, letting himself think maybe he is flirting with him a little. “Well yeah, I do like salad. I just think it's healthier for me. Sometimes there's no other options than steak, though, so when I _do_ have the choice…”

“I wish ‘no other option than steak’ came up more often in _my_ life,” Starsky laments, but he shrugs off the rest. What does he care if Hutch likes to eat healthy, it’s not a bad idea. Not everyone was as ruled by their stomach as Starsky is.

The burger place isn't far, and they order, and Hutch buys. “You can get me next time.”

“Hey, you been buying all night,” Starsky says. “But alright, I got next time.”

The place actually does make a pretty good burger, and Starsky is both surprised and pleased that a place that makes vegetarian food knows how to not mess up on other stuff.

“So, I know you went to college, what’d you study?” Starsky asks, as he works on his fries—extra ketchup.

“Yeah, I did Psych. Wrestling scholarship, from high school, if you'll believe that,” Hutch says, submitting his lanky frame as evidence. “I was thinking maybe criminology or law, but my grades weren't that good. And, ah, after the divorce... _s_ , I needed a change of scenery, so I moved down here to become a cop, hopefully.”

“Plural, huh? Ouch,” Starsky says, thinking Hutch seems awful young for that, but sometimes young love doesn’t last. “Your grades are plenty good now, I’m sure you’ll get a good position.”

Hutch grins. “Thanks.”

Nearing the full moon, Hutch is hungrier than usual, and positively wolfs down his bean burger and considers ordering a second, but he is sure he'll have enough to eat later. Luckily, Starsky seems to be a fast eater, too, so he doesn't look too weird. “What's your story?”

“Oh boy, well,” Starsky says. “With a mind to time, the short version is that I grew up in New York as a kid, but as a teenager I got into some trouble. I wasn’t a real uh, law abiding kid. So they sent me to Bay City and I finished up high school a year late, then I got the draft. I got back from that about a year ago and kicked around until I figured out what I wanted to do with myself.”

Hutch's eyes go wide: he can't really help it, as sheltered as he kind of is.

He grins, stealing a fry from Hutch’s plate, having finished his own. “So I guess pretty much I decided to go right back to boot camp. It was such a joy the first time.”

But then the mood is light again, Starsky makes him grin, and Hutch slides his plate over, ceding the fries. “You're the real American hero, then. And good cop material, if you know something about the motivation from the other side.”

“Hah! That’s something to say,” Starsky laughs. “I don’t think they’re gonna feel that way in the precinct, but juvenile records are sealed so they don’t gotta know.”

Hutch guzzles the last of his pop: he can already feel his need for sugar as the Change approaches. “Hey, maybe they'd make us partners. We'd be a good team.”

“Sure, except one of us would have to be the bad cop, right?” Starsky leans on the table, bracing his chin on his hand. “I guess with some practice we might make it work.”

A casual glance at his watch reveals that they’re pushing it awful close. “Hey, you better get back, it’s only about three minutes to eight!”

“Oh!” Hutch says, and then laughs. “We're having such a good time, maybe I should call her and cancel.”

He winks and stands, offering Starsky a handshake—and realizes his hair and fingernails have started to grow, _shit._

Hutch moves to pat his shoulder, instead, awkwardly, and hurries out. “It was great to chat, let's do this again! See you in the morning!”

“Yeah, have a good night, Hutchinson!”

“Call me Hutch!” Hutch shouts behind him.

It gives Starsky something else to think about other than the fact that for just a minute, Hutch’s nails had seemed so _long_.


	2. Chapter 2

Starsky doesn’t make it back until later, though he remembers that Hutch had mentioned going over to the girl’s place for the evening, so in absence of any warning signs that tell him any hanky panky is happening in the shared room, he swings the door open and makes it back in time for lights out. At least, with about five minutes to spare. The lights automatically go out while he’s washing his face and brushing his teeth, and he groans and rolls his eyes. 

_ Military precision. _

Starsky strips down to his boxers and gets in bed, danced out. His thoughts, naturally, turn to his roommate. Maybe they  _ had _ been a little flirtatious earlier? Not that it was safe to do anything like that here. Cops were usually alright, but there’s the wrong sort in every crowd and in a group where they felt pressure to fit in, they could get mean. 

But it’s not enough to lose sleep over, Starsky tells himself. 

Hutch has a good night, or the wolf does, eating about three cheeseburgers worth of meat in feral pig—and those things are mean, too, so, a good fight for the whole pack—and something they can be proud of the next day, keeping the numbers down for the farmers. 

He’s a little roughed up, now, though, and tired, and has to get up in just a few hours, so how bad can it be to sneak back in through his window before the moon goes down? Surely Starsky will be asleep by now, probably flat out, after the dancing and the drinking, and Hutch will even happily sleep on the floor so if Starsky  _ does  _ wake up, he won’t see him. 

So a few hours before dawn, the wolf slinks into the compound, past the guys on duty, and while he does all this smoothly and silently, there is kind of no way for a huge white wolf to scramble in through the open window  _ gracefully _ , and he skitters a little on the tiled floor. 

Starsky is an unusually heavy sleeper on a good day, but on bad days (and he still has quite a few of those), he can only sleep in bursts, or in strange positions where most of his body is pressed against hard (protective) surfaces. Tonight’s not that bad, but he’s alert enough that when he hears something unfamiliar he wakes up.

He’s sure it’s a dream, at first. Some weird echo or nightmare. Then he hears breathing, a footstep.  _ Hutchinson _ , probably coming back in sneakily after his date. Starsky rolls over toward the center of the room. “Hey, return of the conquering hero— _ oh _ !”

There is something decidedly not human-shaped in the room, and Starsky shoots back against the wall, grappling for some kind of weapon. What he comes up with is the alarm clock, gripped in one hand protectively. His eyes are well adjusted enough to recognize the shape as  _ canine _ , and his sleepy mind is slowly assembling some kind of logic.

_ Fuck _ , Hutch thinks, or whatever the wolf-version of that thought is that has nothing to do with sex.  _ Shit _ . (Again, the wolf-version that has nothing to do with defecating.) 

He has no way of communicating with Starsky, of course, who just happens to be awake, of course ( _ Why is he awake? It’s still four in the morning! _ ). He tries to bound back out the window, and possibly never return, determined he’s already given the game up, but it snapped shut behind him upon his clumsy reentry, and he scrambles to the far side of the room. 

He’s not going to  _ attack  _ Starsky, he’s not some wild bitten-wolf, no. Not to mention if he  _ scares  _ Starsky, he’ll call animal control or something, and then he’ll be in serious trouble—or worse, he’ll pull a gun on him, or something more dangerous than an alarm clock. 

So, with he and Starsky staring at each other with their backs pressed to opposite walls, Hutch intends to let out a low growl, but what comes out is something more like a confused whimper. 

“Ah, Christ, you scared me,” Starsky says, huffing out a breath. Just a  _ dog. _ He puts the alarm clock back down on the bedside table, catching his breath. Maybe not the best decision, considering how big the dog is, but it’s shrunk back against the wall behind itself just like he is. This must be the dog he kept suspecting Hutch of having.

“Sorry, uh, boy,” Starsky says, though it’s stupid to talk to a dog, and to be fair, he doesn’t know if it’s a boy or girl dog. “You startled me. You must come around for Hutch to feed, huh?”

_ He thinks I’m a dog _ , Hutch realizes, both wildly hopeful and mildly offended.  _ How many dogs do you know who are this big, buddy? _ But he snorts and sniffs, and behaves submissively, how he expects dogs to act. He’s never owned a dog, so his examples are limited to TV dogs that he knows from being a human. It’s a weird chain of thought, a little much for his wolf-brain, but he tries sitting. That’s a good trick. Oh, tongue out. That’s cute, right? 

Starsky very, very carefully moves to the edge of his bed, alert for any sign of hostility, but the dog, if anything, seems confused. He’s not sure what to do about it. Starsky looks up at the open dorm window, and then shrugs. Maybe if he finds whatever Hutch is feeding it and offers it some, it’ll go on its way. 

“I don’t know where he keeps the dog food,” Starsky grumbles, rubbing his face and looking around the relatively undecorated room. He goes through a couple drawers, and doesn’t come up with anything, before he remembers he’s got some jerky in his own snack area. He puts this in a bowl, and offers it carefully in the middle of the floor, then, thinking about it, puts down a bowl of water also. 

Hutch is already impressed by Starsky simply not freaking out, and the wolf needs no further encouragement to love the guy when he gives him a bit of jerky and a dish of water. The water is the thing he was really craving, but he eats the jerky to be polite, and then goes back to sitting. He thumps his tail against the floor a few times, trying to act doglike. 

“Boy, your mother must have been a Saint Bernard,” Starsky says, getting a real feel for how big the dog is now that he’s seen as much of it as he can in the dark. But it’s not being aggressive, and if Hutch feeds it regularly, it’s probably okay. “I figured Hutch had something going on, I kept finding these hairs.”

Hutch gives a soft whuff of agreement, belatedly letting his tongue hang out again. Apparently, he was a lot less smooth than he thought he was being—or else Starsky was smarter than Hutch gave him credit for. 

Hutch finds himself thinking Starsky is going to make a wonderful detective. 

About the time Starsky realizes he’s talking to the dog (more to himself) is about the time his tiredness returns, so he reminds himself to talk to Hutch about it tomorrow, yawning. He offers the back of his hand for a sniff, and when no immediate hostility ensues, Starsky gives the dog a quick ear-rub. “Lay down somewhere, get some rest.”

Boy, if Hutch could train that thing to be a police dog, Starsky thinks, crime would just stop. 

_ Aw, shit _ , Hutch thinks. He didn’t open the window for him. Not that Hutch wants to go outside—he’s tired, he came back for a reason—but now he’s up for an awkward conversation in the morning, or else some quick thinking. 

Still, there’s a nice spot on the floor on the other side of the bed that he can curl up in, and wait for the change. The moon should set around the same time as his alarm goes off, and maybe he can just—pretend to have let the dog out already. Yeah! Good plan. Less awkward conversation. 

...

Hutch wakes up still on the floor, with Starsky standing over him. 

“Uh,” Starsky says. “Long night? Your dog came around.”

To be perfectly honest, he’s not sure that’s the whole explanation anymore, but he can’t think of any other ones. Maybe the dog went out when Hutch came in? Starsky’s seen a movie or two like this, where men could turn into wolves, but that was just the  _ movies _ . Hutch is naked on the floor, so the deduction is that he’d been on a hell of a bender with his girlfriend. The dog is gone, so the deduction is that it’s gone out. There are multiple points of exit from the room, and Hutch had to have come in through the door. 

Not that Hutch doesn’t look really good splayed out naked, but now’s not the time for that. Starsky offers a towel. “You better take a shower, we still have drills in an hour.”

“My…?” Hutch wonders, blinking stupidly up at Starsky, and then sitting up in a panic. “Shit!” 

Hutch scrambles to his feet, trying to cover himself, so absurdly grateful that Starsky has already decided upon an excuse for all the really obvious clues that he laughs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, man. Thank you for, ah, feeding my—for not telling anyone? You’re not going to tell anyone, right?” 

Hoofbeats, think horses not… _ werewolves _ . Starsky shrugs. “I don’t see any reason why I should. You could have told me you had a dog sooner. I like dogs!”

“Sorry, yeah, sorry,” Hutch says. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react. He doesn’t come around all that often, if you’re worried.” 

Starsky grins, leaning back out of the way to let Hutch have the room he needs to get into the shower. “I’d ask how your date went, but I got a pretty good idea.”

Starsky gets his own clothes together. It was a weird night, but maybe if he just keeps on going like this was all normal, it’d eventually make more sense. 

“I, yeah, I mostly made a fool out of myself, I guess,” Hutch admits, basing his idea for his “date” on what he remembers of interacting with Starsky. He throws a towel on and heads for the shower. “How’d you sleep? You have a good night?” 

“More or less,” Starsky says, with a shrug, pulling on a clean shirt. “I only woke up once when the dog came in. Awful big—you think you could get him into the police K-9 program?”

“Ah. Probably too old,” Hutch deflects, wondering if he has  _ javelina  _ breath—or worse, jerky breath—and goes to brush his teeth. “But maybe if I look into it I don’t have to keep sneaking him in and out, right?”

When he ducks into the shower, Hutch thunks his head against the wall. Oh, his new alphas are  _ not  _ going to like this. Even if Starsky has pretty well convinced himself he is not rooming with a werewolf, it still ought to be reported. There go his plans to impress Dobey…


	3. Chapter 3

By the time he actually does report it, though, Hutch has worked himself into such a frenzy that he expects worse than he gets. A brief reprimand. Dobey is assigned to his case, actually, in charge of keeping an eye on him—and Starsky—“until such time as it becomes a non-issue,” they say. Whatever that means. 

Starsky, having completely talked himself into believing that there was, is, and always had been a dog, continues to hang around Hutch now that the ice was more or less totally broken. He  _ likes _ Hutch. He forgets about the whole thing, mostly. 

“I hope that dog’s okay,” Starsky says one day, when they’re graduated and situated. He’d been pleased to get assigned to the same PD as Hutch, and they were put together on patrol, even. “Even if it was half Saint Bernard, it’s tough out here.”

Hutch laughs easily: he’s matured a lot over the past few months, beginning to feel comfortable in this town and in his place in it—in no small part, he’s sure, because of Starsky’s friendship. He’s learned to be more careful, and yet his big-hearted roommate-turned-partner still occasionally worries about that “dog.” 

(Which maybe should have clued Hutch in to the fact that deep down, Starsky wasn’t actually totally sure it was  _ just  _ some “dog.”)

But it didn’t bother Hutch now. In spite of his near-slip, Dobey had given him a chance after graduation, and hired on Starsky, too, since they worked well together and Dobey wanted to keep an eye on both of them. 

“Starsky, that dog is fine,” Hutch says with a grin, though he checks his watch again. The stakeout was supposed to have been done hours ago, and tonight was a full moon. At some point, he was going to have to start making up an excuse, or Dobey was. 

“How do you know?” Starsky asks, clearly bored. Their relief was extremely late, and Starsky is getting hungry and sleepy. “When I was a kid my Ma told me once that the family dog was sent away to a farm upstate, only come to find out later it got run over on the freeway.”

He glances at Hutch. “You got a place now. I got a place. Wish we coulda kept that dog.”

“He was a good dog.” Now Hutch is just being vain, and it almost distracts him from how long they’ve been left out here. “Maybe we should call in again?”

Starsky picks up the receiver, and punches through to dispatch, waiting for a comeback from Dobey.

“You okay, partner? You're looking a little pale, now that I think about it,” Starsky says, keying into the strain in Hutch’s voice on some subconscious level, now that he knows him better. They both know most of each other’s little tells by now. 

“Me? Ah. No, I’m fine. Maybe I’m coming down with something?” Hutch says, and hears the voice crackle through their comms, saying Dobey is out of the office and should she try him at home?

“You don't look fine, partner,” Starsky says, with an edge of concern in his voice.

“I think I need to—find a bathroom,” Hutch says, and gets halfway out of the car just as their perp reveals himself. Both Hutch and the pimp freeze, for though Starsky and Hutch had been in an unmarked car, both of them are still in uniforms, and the guy they’ve been waiting for knows he’s been made. 

The only good thing about this is that Hutch, at this time of the month, wants nothing more than to  _ give chase _ . 

Both he and Starsky leave the car behind at first, before Starsky sees Hutch is going after the perp on foot, and Starsky ducks back into the car to drive after and try to get ahead of them. He manages to cut the guy off on the sidewalk with the car’s front end just as Hutch launches himself at the guy like full out. 

Starsky is out of the car a second later, surprised by his partner's sudden tenacity. He draws his gun to cover, but there's something wrong with the way Hutch is moving, and Starsky lurches forward, afraid Hutch is hurt. 

Hutch is on the guy—a street pimp, and not known for his kindness to his “employees”—and only realizes he’s changing when his hands come up as paws and he can’t cuff the guy. Hutch hears and feels his clothes ripping, and knows he should bolt, he needs to run, the perp and Starsky can’t see him like this, but when he’s about halfway transformed, the criminal, either through terror or taking advantage of Hutch’s momentary pause, kicks him off and scrambles to his feet. 

Starsky and the pimp actually pause for a few seconds, watching in horror as Hutch’s bones and skin rearrange themselves into something like a wolf—or maybe more a shaggy pale son of a Saint Bernard, according to Starsky. 

When his body stops feeling like it’s on fire and Hutch’s vision clears (narrows, actually, down to four shades of color, but better at seeing in the dark), the wolf realizes that the pimp has a gun. 

Starsky mouths a few silent words, obviously stunned, though his mind should have put this together long ago, it’s all just more than he expects. More than he can deal with in the instant, before he’s face-to-face with the wolf, wearing Hutch’s shredded clothes, and then he and the pimp are equally surprised by it. 

He lurches for the gun in the man’s hands, knowing that is the clearer and more present danger to himself and Hutch both. He can deal with Hutch later, but first he has to finish this.  _ This  _ is easier; he understands it better. 

“Drop the gun!” Starsky demands, as they struggle for it. 

“Are you crazy! Do you see that thing!!”

Hutch isn’t going to make Starsky have to defend him—he can defend himself pretty well, now, actually—and lunges for them both, paws flat to knock them down without hurting Starsky, and gets between them, snarling. The gun comes up and the wolf wants to  _ eat  _ it, apparently, for how much he does not stop. There’s a shot, but Hutch doesn’t feel it, wonders if the guy missed, actually, and the guy panics and turns the weapon on Starsky. 

“Call off your dog—or I’ll shoot you both!”

“Hey, drop the gun!” Starsky gets his own out, finally, leveling it at the guy pinned under…well, Hutch. Or the dog. Or the wolf. Or the  _ werewolf _ , but Starsky’s not dealing with that right now. He doesn’t know where that shot went, but he knows it didn’t hit  _ him _ and that’s what matters.

So, between he and Hutch—and Starsky is very cautious about nudging Hutch off the pimp—they get handcuffs on the guy, and Starsky contains him in the back of their patrol car, catching his breath.”

“What the  _ hell _ ?” he demands of Hutch. 

Hutch whines, suddenly quite shy, and is ready to bolt whenever he wriggles out of what's left of his uniform. But when he puts his front paw down he gives a little yelp and cradles it close. Somewhere in the meat of his shoulder is where that bullet ended up, apparently. 

It’s getting pretty dark out, but Starsky can see the blood, and then he forgets to be afraid. Obviously the wolf could eat him if it wanted, but it hadn’t gone all ‘I Was a Teenage Werewolf’ or Boris Karloff yet, so Starsky was pretty sure, crazy as it is, that Hutch is still in there. And he’s hurt.

“Ah, Hutch, your shoulder,” Starsky says, hesitating for just a minute as he approaches, though the pimp in the back of the car is ranting and raving, Starsky gets down on his knees to have a look. “He tagged you good.”

Starsky smells good like this, in this form, smells safe and familiar, and the part of Hutch that's normally screaming to get out in some open place and run and hunt is rather quiet. Maybe if he could find someplace to den up with Starsky and let him lick his wounds—

_ Uh, okay, weird _ , Hutch thinks, yanking himself back from that rabbit-hole. 

Starsky crouches down by him.  _ What did you do about it when a werewolf got shot? _ Starsky doesn’t really know. There has to be something you did. The hospital? A vet? Both of those things seem pretty crazy. Starsky gives one sideways glance to that really big muzzle full of very sharp teeth, before he leans in a little closer, digging down into the fur to look at the wound. 

Hutch whimpers again, flinching slightly, but lets Starsky get close. The wound is nothing—a splinter, it’ll heal out of him when he transforms—so all his focus is on this moment between them. It’s like how he imagines telling his lover he’s a werewolf should go (should have gone)—more like they’re communicating telepathically than with words. 

“Well, I don’t think it hit an artery but it’s not exactly good,” Starsky says, running a hand through his hair, trying to figure out what to do. “Why didn’t you just  _ tell _ me you big dope? I mean I know why you didn’t, I wouldn’t have believed you, but you  _ turkey _ , what do I do now?”

Hutch stands up to his full height, almost knocking Starsky back on his ass, and shakes himself: he’s fine. 

Starsky shakes his head. “Really, I hope you have a good vet or something.”

Then, because Starsky looks a little scared of him all of a sudden, he leans in and licks his face before bounding back a few paces, as if unsure why he did that. 

Picking himself up off the ground, Starsky dusts off his pants, and looks at the car, and then back at Hutch. “Listen, you got a lot of explaining to do, but that’s obviously not going to happen right now?”

As if to verify, Starsky looks up to see the full moon, and then stops to pick up Hutch’s half-torn clothes. At least his shoes are still good. 

“You go home,” Starsky tells him, trying not to sound like he’s giving a command to a dog but it’s hard to do when he’s looking at a wolf that…now that he thinks about it, looks a lot like his partner. Same blue eyes, same blonde fur. “I’ll haul this guy in and cover for you, then meet you at your place. And you can tell me what the heck is going on!”

If his voice breaks a little on the last part, it’s perfectly understandable. This is a stressful situation, and it’s all a bit much. Starsky had held his own in Vietnam, but no one had ever turned into a werewolf, there. Unless they had. He needs to sit down somewhere and think about all this. 

Hutch cocks his head to one side:  _ You’d do that, for me? _

And then Starsky looks a little faint, and Hutch presses his nose to Starsky’s hand and gives a soft whine. He’s trying to tell him it’ll be okay, that he’s okay, that he’s grateful. 

Then Hutch hears a siren—somebody must have called because of the shot—and bolts. Three full-body bounds and he’s gone around a corner, headed for home. 

Starsky can still feel the cool, wet imprint of a nose against his palm and it helps him keep himself together for a minute, before he leans back into the car they’d been in and quickly crams all Hutch’s torn up clothes into the glove compartment, and gives the perp a stern glare.

“You didn’t see anything, right?  You had a very bad trip today,” Starsky admonishes. “And you’re gonna go downtown and tell everyone you’re strung out.” 

“What the fuck, man!” the pimp shouts, kicking the back of the seat. “That’s what they got for K-9s these days? Shit!” 

“Yeah, that’s right, it was just a dog,” Starsky says, dropping himself into the driver’s seat and answering dispatch’s call for information, mind racing as he tries to figure out how he’s going to cover all of this. Finally, he meets up with the other two patrol officers, and they all head to the station. 

Starsky hauls the guy in, drops him in an isolation tank, and barges into Captain Dobey’s office to find he’s still not there, but catches hold of Minnie on overnight shift.

“Listen, did you see when Captain Dobey left? My partner and I were supposed to be relieved on stakeout hours ago and nobody came,” he says, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. 

“You weren’t relieved?” the dispatch agent says, looking haggard. “Look, the captain gets one night off a month to spend with his wife, and of course it has to be the night four other people call in. It always happens like this, doesn’t it?  _ And  _ while there’s lunatics on the streets—”

She narrows her eyes suddenly. “Where’s your partner? Hutchinson?” 

“He came down sick really suddenly,” Starsky says. “He should have been off duty anyway, but he didn’t want to leave the surveillance and uh…well I caught the guy. He had to go find a bathroom really fast. I told him to go home and take care of his stomach.”

Starsky  _ hopes _ that’s enough, but then what she’s saying registers. “Tonight’s Dobey’s night off too? And four other guys, you said?”

It’s fishy, but he doesn’t want her to think it is. “Must be a flu!”

“Ugh, then get away from my desk, I don’t want you infecting me!” she says. “Unless you want some overtime. Scratch that, you’re staying here until your report on this guy is done, then you can go.”

Starsky groans. “Can I turn it in in the morning? I have the preliminary report, but he’s not going anywhere until tomorrow night, and Dobey won’t even be here to read it tomorrow.”

He should do it now, should carry on like everything’s normal, but nothing is. However, Minnie’s stony gaze gets him to sit down more or less on his chair and start furiously scribbling a report. At least this way he’ll have the details of what he’s going to say happened so he can go over them with Hutch. He turns the hastily scribbled report in to Dobey’s secretary, then grabs his jacket before she can protest, and pauses by the officer in charge of lockup to tell him that the prisoner he’d brought in should be treated as an addict who’s drying out. 

“He’s been saying all sorts of crazy things,” Starsky warns. “I think maybe some time to think and a place to sleep and water will set him alright but keep an eye on him, okay? I’m sure the detectives in charge of his case will wanna speak to him tomorrow.”

Then he bolts out the door, making it back to Hutch’s place in record time, visions of his friend bleeding out on his own carpet swimming in his mind. 

...

Hutch can usually break into his apartment in wolf form without actually breaking anything, and, so far, anyway, no one else has broken in this way. First of all, you have to be really strong to push the bay window the opposite way it’s supposed to go, and then you have to be dainty to clear the potted plants he has laying in ambush (where they can get the most sun). He’s not particularly light on his feet right now, though, and clips one of the pots, which crashes to the ground. 

It’s honestly more horrifying than the gunshot wound. What he wouldn’t give for opposable thumbs right now!! 

He huffs and paces around his apartment, limping slightly, still, before his body can heal. He doesn’t know why he’s come home, now. It’s too early and he’s restless, and also mad at himself for being so stupid as to change in front of his partner, and mad about his dying plant, and mad that Starsky isn’t here. Maybe Starsky won’t even come. Maybe he should go meet up with the pack...and face Dobey like this, and probably not be able to keep up on the hunt. 

Hutch flops dramatically onto his side, whining a little just to hear himself complain. 

...

Starsky enters the house with the key he knows is hidden in one of the flowerpots on the deck, and finds his partner—or well, a werewolf he knows to share a body with his partner—lying on the floor and whining. He turns on the light, and then tries not to panic, rushing into the bathroom for the first aid kit.

“Hutch, buddy,” Starsky rushes to him, dropping to his knees at Hutch’s side. “I knew I shouldn’t have waited around at the station. Show me the injury, okay? Where does it hurt?” 

Oh, no, now Starsky is  _ worried _ . Hutch heaves himself to his feet to show he's all right, and licks Starsky's hand again, for good measure—it feels kind of weird, maybe, but no more intimate than their usual gestures and touches. 

Then he remembers Starsky has  _ thumbs _ , and he rushes over to the fallen plant and barks, once, loudly.  _ This, here, this is the real issue! _

“What?” Starsky asks, attempting to piece together the trouble. Hutch didn’t want Starsky to look at his shoulder—which from the glance he’d gotten already looked better—but he was barking at a broken plant pot on the ground.

Starsky looks at Hutch, the werewolf, in utter disbelief, and sits back, rubbing his forehead. “The plant. You’re whining about the plant?”

Hutch yips once and jumps up on his hind legs a few times. 

A peek at Hutch confirms this, as the wolf stares at Starsky with extremely expectant eyes, and he sighs, a very long sigh, before he picks himself up, and goes into the kitchen. He finds one of Hutch’s old plastic cups, the ones he keeps holding off on throwing away because of the environment, and savages a few holes into the bottom with a kitchen knife, then he scoops all the dirt he can out of Hutch’s carpet, places the plant in on top, and sets it down on the drainage bowl where the pot used to sit, one ugly duckling planter among the rest.

It's perfect. Hutch yips again, dancing happily around the living room to show his gratitude.

“You’re a real piece of work,” Starsky tells Hutch, but it sounds almost fond, as he picks up the broken pieces of terra cotta. “Does this happen every month? No wonder your behavior has been so strange.”

Hutch whines a little, apologetically, and licks Starsky's hand again. When Starsky bends down to pick up pieces of the broken pot, Hutch licks behind his ears and throws his weight behind it, to initiate a little grateful, loving rough-housing. 

For a moment, Starsky goes still; Hutch was  _ big _ like this, and dangerous, and he’d seen how he’d taken out that pimp. It’s a little scary to get rough-housed by a wolf the first time for anybody. It doesn’t hurt, though: there’s no teeth involved. Just Hutch throwing his weight around. Starsky has the advantage of center of gravity and opposable thumbs, but Hutch is a nearly 200 pound animal and not afraid to use it to his advantage.

Somewhere between winding up halfway trapped under a wolf, and throwing his  _ own _ weight around, Starsky’s shirt hikes up. “Alright! Alright I surrender, I’m getting rug burn.”

Hutch scrambles off his friend immediately, licking his face, and then sobers, laying down to face Starsky like they can have this serious talk they needed to have right away. 

There's still some blood in his fur, and his shoulder aches a little, but he's too overwhelmingly grateful for everything Starsky has done to worry about it—or much of anything, now that the plant has been cleaned up, too. Starsky has shown his true colors already, so the wolf, at least, is completely unworried about him, even if Hutch is a little worried about how the talk in the morning will go. 

“They don’t get this right at all in the movies, huh?” Starsky says, leaning back against the wall without getting up off the ground. Hutch doesn’t really look anything like the wolfman, or act anything like a wild beast. Maybe just a really, really big wolf that understands what Starsky is saying and cares too much about plants. “Would you hold a grudge if I tried to make you play fetch? Hey, I got your uniform back. I don’t know how you’re gonna explain that.”

Hutch growls, a short rumble to say what he thinks about fetch and about ruining his uniform, and waits for Starsky to say more.

Starsky, despite the excitement of the night, or maybe  _ because _ of it, is feeling tired. Very tired. And while maybe it’s not the greatest idea to fall asleep around any wolf, Hutch seems disinclined toward eating him. So, as he tells himself it’s safer to stay awake, Starsky still drifts off, right there on the floor.

Hutch sees his partner's eyes droop one too many times, and licks his cheek softly, and steps back, turns, and looks behind him. The Lassie school of ‘follow me,’ though Hutch isn't very used to communicating with people while in wolf form. He yips once for good measure, and, when Starsky doesn't seem to want to follow, he tugs gently on his sleeve with his teeth. 

He leads Starsky to his bedroom, waiting expectantly for Starsky to make use of the bed. 

“I could sleep on the couch,” Starsky offers, but Hutch barks at him again, and Starsky is just way too tired to argue with a wolf. “Alright, alright. But I hope you remember all this in the morning or we’re both in for a shock.”

He kicks his shoes off and settles into Hutch’s bed, which smells like Hutch, deeply and intimately, and he bunches up one of Hutch’s lumpy pillows and settles down to sleep in his clothes. It’s more comfortable than he expected, anyway. 

Hutch waits for Starsky to settle down, and then jumps up onto the bed, as well, turning a few circles and sniffing around. The wolf isn't his usual restless self, happy to bunk down instead of running around like a fool all night, so he takes advantage of the good night's rest he's going to get, and doesn't think about how he's enjoying spending it lying next to his best friend.


	4. Chapter 4

He wakes up with Starsky actually clasped between his paws—arms, now, nearly smothering him, and stark naked. 

“Uh,” Hutch says, pulling back gingerly. 

Starsky wakes up slowly, separated from Hutch by his clothes and a layer of blankets so it’s fine that Hutch is naked (or so he tells himself) and besides, it’s not the first time he’s seen Hutch naked, either. He blinks his eyes open, looking into Hutch’s worried face, and all he can think of to say is, “You must have been  _ dog tired _ , huh?”

“Funny,” Hutch says, getting up and holding a pillow in front of himself until he can back up to the dresser and find some pants. “I'm sorry I, ah, woke up on top of you, I guess wolf-me decided you were my pack for the evening…”

“Pack?” Starsky asks, sounding a little concerned, but he’s amused by Hutch’s sudden modesty. He’d played sports in high school, then been in the army, so nothing Hutch could show him could offend him. 

_ Not even a wolf... _

Maybe, Hutch thinks, if he just talks about it like it's the most natural thing in the world (and it  _ is _ for him), they can skip the whole ‘the truth is out there’ part of this conversation. But still, a thank you is in order: “So, ah, thanks for...covering for me. Ah. And fixing my plant…”

He checks his shoulder, where there's a little healing scab. There's probably a bullet in his bed somewhere that worked itself out of him, which he'll look for later.

“Yeah, uh, you got shot. You wanna tell me about that? I mean, to start,” Starsky says. His eyes feel a little gritty and he feels like he slept in his clothes, which he did, but he also had the weirdest night he’d ever had without drinking.

“Yeah, I'll tell you,” Hutch says, with a mostly straight face. “But then I'll have to eat you.”

Starsky doesn't even laugh. “You know what, you get dressed, I’ll make coffee.”

He hoists himself out of bed and goes into the kitchen to do that, figuring he’ll handle it all better if he’s got some caffeine in his system. 

“So I guess all the movies are kinda wrong and kinda right?” Starsky asks, once the percolator is going. “At least about werewolves.”

Hutch joins him, dressed but looking like he still feels naked. “Mostly wrong. The moon thing is right. But I don't eat people. We keep—ahh, ahem,  _ I  _ keep…”

Hutch rubs his face. “I mean, okay, either you have to pretend you don't know anything and we never speak of this again, or I have to tell...people. And I don't know what they'll want to do about you knowing.”

“I mean, I’m gonna  _ know _ ,” Starsky says, practically. “I guess you should start by telling me what the risk is. There are more of you, right? Werewolves, I mean.”

He seems constitutionally incapable of letting it go. Hutch was going to keep changing, and Starsky wanted to keep being his friend. He’s not sure how they could both ignore a big part of Hutch’s life and be functional partners. Hutch seems uncomfortable with talking about it more, however.

“There…are, yes,” Hutch says, taking over in the kitchen and starting to fry up some eggs. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? Are the other werewolves more likely to be vicious?” Starsky wonders, pouring them each a cup of coffee and passing one to Hutch. 

“Not... _ werewolves _ , no,” Hutch says slowly. “Mostly.”

He can't quite look at Starsky, worried he will be afraid of him, or disappointed. “If you know, you'll have to go before the council. They want to know, so if you tell anyone…”

“Why does it matter? No one’s gonna believe me,” Starsky says. “Not any more than they believe the old stories and movies.”

“I know, I know,” Hutch says with a sigh, and chuckles. The coffee finishes brewing, and he brings Starsky a mug. Their hands brush, and Hutch takes a second too long to let go of the mug. “I'm glad—if anyone had to find me out...it was you.”

He laughs nervously. “I mean,  _ Dobey’s _ gonna be pissed.”

“ _ Dobey _ knows, but you didn’t tell me?” Starsky asks, injured. 

“Uh…”

Starsky drinks his coffee, glowering a little, before he realizes why that might be the case, and he jerks the mug away from his mouth, slopping coffee. “ _ He’s _ a werewolf too! He was out last night! How big is this, Hutch?”

“Yeah. Ah. Not that big,” Hutch says evasively, going back to the egg pan. “I guess you'll find out tonight? The council comes together pretty quick on these things.”

“That is quick,” Starsky says, a little uncertain at the prospect, “but I don’t see anything else for it. We’re partners, right? Better that all this is out in the open.”

“Yeah.” Hutch plates the scrambled eggs and sits across from Starsky. “Anything else you wanted to ask me? I'm kinda glad I don't have to keep secrets from you anymore.”

He is, of course, genuinely relieved. Starsky is his best friend, after all.

Starsky thinks about all of this, sure he’s going to have about a million questions, but for now the first one that occurs to him is, “So did you get bitten by a werewolf?”

Hutch chuckles and shakes his head, and gets up to hand Starsky the hot sauce he knows he'll want. “No, born this way. If I had been a bitten wolf, you and I would not be having this conversation.”

“What’s that mean?” Starsky asks. “So, how are you a werewolf, then?”

He’s grateful for the hot sauce, then, shaking it on his eggs as he waits for Hutch’s reply. “This would all be like a bad dream except I saw it happen.”

“You can see it again, actually. I can change again tomorrow night, too, though I don't usually. It's only involuntary the one night of the month.” Hutch waits for Starsky's reaction on this before continuing. “And I mean, bitten werewolves can't control themselves as well. If I hadn't been born a werewolf, if my mother and father weren't werewolves, too, you'd be dead, and that pimp, too, because I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself tearing you to pieces.”

“So, there are werewolves that go berserk?” Starsky wonders, surprised by this. “How come I haven’t heard about it? Seems like there’d be at least…like wild animal attacks reported.”

“That's why we have a council. We keep track of wolves that could be a danger to the public, keep an eye on hunters or vampires that could be a danger to  _ us _ … Keep any incidents quiet or blamed on real wolves or pumas and things. Mainly we keep an eye on the bitten wolves in our pack so we don't get any more.”

He pauses, chewing his food, before the first part of Hutch’s offer penetrates his thoughts. “So, you can change when you want to? And I can see it again? I’d like to, if that’s not…weird.” 

“Sure. Him. Wolf-me likes you even more than I do.” Hutch smiles, glances down, and then back up at Starsky. “You know, Starsk, I mean it. Thanks for...not freaking out last night. For being there for me. For—hell, for being  _ worried _ about me.”

“You got shot, of course I was worried,” Starsky says, digesting the information just as much as he’s digesting breakfast. It’s a lot to absorb, but…well, if Hutch has been a werewolf this whole time, and Starsky knows the truth behind that whole ordeal with the dog and Hutch being naked in their room that one time, now, then what’s the difference really? “He coulda shot me, instead. I don’t know what to expect now that there’s uh, apparently, all this out in the world…but we’re partners. That means we take care of each other, even in uh, extenuating circumstances.”

“Right. Ah, and maybe forget I mentioned vampires,” Hutch chuckles. “Or act surprised later.”

“Should I ask what else is real? You know what, I’ll figure it out,” Starsky pushes his plate away, having finished. “Whaddaya mean the wolf likes me more than you do, exactly?” 

Now Hutch blushes, bright pink from his chest to his ears. “I...I just mean, ah. You're part of the pack, is all. Stands to reason, we spend so much time together. I don't normally go to bed on the first date.”

He tries to make it a joke, but it's a little too near the truth, he thinks, so it's not quite funny. Hutch does  _ like  _ Starsky, as more than just a friend and partner—and maybe  _ pack _ isn't quite strong enough, either. 

(Like his last relationship with a non-wolf went so well.)

“I know that’s not true at all,” Starsky laughs. “Remember Cassidy? Nancy? Caroline… ‘Oh, sorry, Starsk! I can’t go bowling, got a hot date.’”

Starsky had never minded, exactly, so it’s not like it matters now, but he  _ does _ wonder how that works out. “Hey, all those girls weren’t werewolves, were they?”

Hutch laughs, letting Starsky tease him, even though most of the dates he goes on are fabrications before Starsky could know he had werewolf business. “I mean I guess most of them were. It's easier for everyone if I meet a nice wolf. But.”

Hutch shrugs and grins. “I don't know how you keep weaseling these answers out of me.”

“Because you like me,” Starsky says, frankly. “We’re friends, and honestly I don’t care what the council says, I need to know some things if we’re going to continue being partners. Like what to do if you get injured when you’re a wolf, or what dangers there might be for you.”

Starsky refills his coffee cup. “I didn’t know what to do when you got shot last night. Do you go to the vet? To the doctor? Is there someone you can see?”

“Sorry I worried you,” Hutch says, taking Starsky’s hand briefly in a fit of sentimentalism. “But you don't need to worry. We have a doctor who knows about us. But unless I get hit by anything silver, I'm okay. So you let me take the bullets if I'm a wolf.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Starsky says. “Let’s nobody take any bullets they don’t have to. What happens to you if it’s silver?”

Hutch grins and holds out his cup for more coffee. “Same thing that happens to you if you get shot with a regular bullet. Well, maybe more like a lead bullet, if it gets into my bloodstream... I just heal faster, if it's not silver, or anyway, the wolf does.”

“Either way, let’s try not to get shot,” Starsky says. “I’m sure not eager to test the limits of what you can heal from, right? I better talk the council into telling me about where the doctor is.”

Refilling Hutch’s cup, Starsky peers at Hutch intently, as if seeking some physical difference now that he knew. He doesn’t feel any different about Hutch, which surprises Starsky a little. After all, they make horror movies about monsters, werewolves included. But really, Starsky guesses they’re more like regular wolves who are just human some of the time. And hadn’t Hutch said something about vampires? “So, what’s it like?”

“What's what like?” Hutch asks. “Being a werewolf? The black and white vision thing is a myth, but my sight isn't as good when I’m a wolf. The sense of smell is amazing. I have a strong sense of smell like this, too, it's why we make good cops. Good chefs, that sort of thing. But in wolf form it's... _ crazy _ . Like I can smell in color.”

Hutch smiles, almost looks a little wistful. “You're really not freaked out, are you?”

“You laid on the floor and whined until I fixed your plant,” Starsky reminds. “I tried to be freaked out but it was just too weird. Maybe I’m just holding onto my freakout until later, but more like… fascinated, I guess. I saw a lot in the Army, anyway. Never werewolves. Guess that’s about the only thing I can compare it to.”

Hutch nods. 

“You don’t talk much about the army,” he observes, and then realizes that was a rude question—or would be, if they weren’t so close, and now, drawing closer. “I mean, not that I blame you. You don’t have to, to me.” 

“I will, sometime,” Starsky says, honestly. It’s not an unfair question for Hutch to ask, given that Starsky now knows  _ his _ secret. “But just yet, there’s not a lot to talk about.”

Now that Hutch thinks about it, the parts of Starsky that he thought exuded coolness and machismo were a kind of vulnerability—not posturing, Starsky never needed to posture, and he remained the kindest person Hutch had yet to meet—but something in how he viewed Starsky now sparked a sudden desire to protect him, but because of what he had seen in this life instead of what he hadn’t. Maybe he was thinking with his wolf brain. But maybe this man he thought had his life and self together needed someone. 

Maybe that someone could really just be Hutch. 

“Alright, well, do you get a day off after your time of the month, or are we back to work today? We got a pimp to interview, I guess.” Starsky attempts to fill the silence that follows while they look at each other with real affection in their eyes, with something other than more complete honesty. Starsky is sure things haven’t changed for the worse, between them. In fact, it feels like everything’s out in the open at last and they finally really know each other all the way. Of course, he also understands why Hutch had kept this from him. 

“And uh, if you get sick of my questions, let me know, but I have a lot,” Starsky grins at him. “Like how you keep all the fur off your clothes.”

Hutch kind of wants to kiss Starsky, though he knows that even in this warm mood  _ that _ wouldn't fly. “I'm not annoyed. I have lots of lint rollers  _ and _ the wolf mostly stays outside. I can take the time off if I need to, but it's just regular vacation time, so we should go in. We’re not due in until noon, right? Long enough for you to join me for a jog, maybe?”

Hutch wags his eyebrows playfully, knowing what Starsky will say to that: he hasn't run a mile off the job since he left the Academy.

“Not in your wildest dreams,” Starsky says, with a laugh. 


	5. Chapter 5

The council does assemble quickly on the matter, Hutch is right. Starsky receives what amounts to an actual summons it seems the next day, only delivered verbally in Captain Dobey’s most authoritative tone. The time and place he’s expected to appear are practically barked at him, and it’s all Starsky can do not to come down with an inappropriate case of the giggles.

“How is it,” he asks Hutch, on their way to the meeting. “That I never guessed Captain Dobey was a werewolf? Does he look like a Rottweiler when he changes over?”

Hutch laughs, a little embarrassed at himself for laughing. He opens up the passenger side of his piece of shit car so Starsky can get in. “No, still a wolf. The coloration is about right, though. Incidentally, we're going to conduct business in human form tonight. Don't ask if you can see anyone's wolf form, it's rude. Otherwise, you'll be fine.”

Hutch starts the car and waits. There's something else.

“Well, yeah, they’d have to be naked to change, and that doesn’t really appeal to me in a bunch of strangers,” Starsky says, chugging along on the trail of this whole endeavor like it was just another case they were working. He parks himself in the passenger seat. “I mean, present company excluded. Hutch, this car is a nightmare, by the way. They should make horror movies about _it_.”

“Well, then I have some good news,” Hutch laughs, and hands Starsky a large rectangle of cloth. “You don't have to look at it.”

“What?” Starsky demands, leaning away from Hutch and the suggestion. “Why? What is this, the Masons?”

“They want you blindfolded until they vet you, until they decide you're safe. You can think about it like training. I bet you can follow where we're going, with just a blindfold on? Easy for you, right?”

Hutch looks at him hopefully—he does a lot more nonverbal communication with Starsky, now, it seems. Maybe it's because they're getting to know each other better. Maybe it's because he's getting better at talking to Starsky without words. Right now he's saying, _Just go with me on this one?_

Starsky folds, his expression changing from faint alarm to resignation the instant Hutch turns those pleading eyes on him. _Alright, for you. I trust you._ He submits to the blindfold, and does his best to make a joke out of it. “This isn’t usually what you wanna be blindfolded for, huh?”

Hutch giggles, adjusting the blindfold. “Yeah, well, maybe I can make it up to you. Ah.”

He’s immediately glad Starsky is wearing a blindfold, because he blushes. “By maybe blindfolding you on the way to some cake. Or something.”

Hutch laughs nervously, and drives them to the council chamber. It's...a high school gym, but therefore fairly nondescript once inside.

“Hang on, I'll come around to get you,” Hutch says, when they stop, patting Starsky’s knee and getting out of the car.

“That secret, huh?” Starsky asks. He waits, however, and lets Hutch open the door and guide him out—he still manages to hit his head on the door frame of Hutch’s car, which is never quite where he expects it. “Ouch!”

“The hand on your head isn't for show, man, I'm trying to guide you,” Hutch says. “There go my dreams of being a seeing eye dog.”

But then he gives Starsky an arm, tells him when to step up and down, and guides him in to meet the council.

It’s strange, having to trust Hutch to guide him over the concrete. The surface feels hard and flat, so that’s what Starsky figures it is. He can’t help but try and listen for cues. He can smell freshly mown grass, which could be anywhere, and he can still hear cars going by not too far away, so they’re not so far from Bay City that Starsky feels concerned that maybe he’s about to be ritualistically cannibalized or anything.

“You’re not leading me in there like a nice fat deer, right?” Starsky asks, trying to lighten the mood.

“If we wanted to eat you, Starsky, we'd’ve already done it,” says a gruff voice, and when Hutch pulls away the blindfold, Captain Dobey sits behind a plastic table, next to four other older men and women who, Starsky guesses, must be werewolves.

When Hutch tries to duck away, Edith, Dobey’s wife, coughs. “Kenneth, don't think you're not under review here, too.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Hutch says, standing next to Starsky.

Starsky tucks his hands into his pockets so he doesn’t get antsy with them, and stands up a little straighter. It feels better to be standing _next_ to Hutch, but he can’t help but stick up for him, too. “Hey, now, that’s not fair. It’s not like he meant to do all this. Our backup didn’t come for hours after they were supposed to. That’s not _Hutch’s_ fault.”

Hutch pats his shoulder, grateful. Dobey grumbles, but his wife lays a hand on his shoulder, in almost the same way.

“Right, well. I'll make the rosters up better, going forward, with two backups on full moons. But if that happens again, I expect you to stay on duty, now, Hutchinson. In whatever form.”

“Yes, sir.”

“David Starsky, you know Harold and Edith Dobey,” says the other woman, whose blonde hair is turning grey. She introduces herself and the other two men, and seems to be the werewolf in charge. “You'll appreciate that we can't let our existence be widely known. But the Dobeys and Hutchinson trust you'll be discreet.”

“Ma’am, nobody would really believe me anyway,” Starsky says, rocking back on his heels a little. “I wouldn’t believe me, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. But I’m happy to follow the, uh, the rules you need me to.”

He looks an entreaty at Dobey. “Just don’t split us up, sir. He’s a good partner.”

Dobey makes a barking sound, and they realize it's a laugh. “Of course we're not splitting you up! Unless _you_ want a new partner.”

Hutch is relieved to hear it, and glad Starsky doesn't want a new partner. It was nice to not have to lie to his best friend and coworker, anymore. He squeezes Starsky’s shoulder. “Yeah, you know, I'd hate to have to break in a new guy.”

“Speaking of breaking things, Hutchinson, about your uniform…” Dobey begins, but before Hutch can open his mouth, he adds, “I'm thinking about taking you two out of uniform.”

“You mean making him go naked?” Starsky asks, before he realizes _exactly_ what Dobey means, and Starsky clears his throat and turns his gaze aside, just a little embarrassed. “Cap, are you promoting us?”

“I'd like to. Hutchinson can destroy his own clothes on the clock,” Dobey says sternly, and then softens a bit. “You're good cops. I think the streets would be safer if I did.”

“We do have rules about knowing of our existence, Mr. Starsky,” the blonde woman said, guiding them back on track. “You must actively protect our secret, not just not tell anyone. This sometimes goes against the desires of good law enforcement members…”

“It's still protecting innocents,” Dobey explains. “You don't let a werewolf off if he commits a crime, but there's no reason people need to know he's a werewolf if it puts other innocent werewolves in danger.”

“What do you do if you catch a werewolf when he’s a werewolf?” Starsky asks, curious. “Besides, of course I’ll keep it secret and do my best to protect Hutch. Nobody wants a crowd with pitchforks. If it wasn’t workable, it wouldn’t be a secret, right?”

“We have a separate branch to deal with supernatural crimes,” Dobey said. “So it's good to have men on the street who know about it.”

“So, okay, if we catch someone who is up to no good and is uh, supernatural?” Starsky asks, following along with the logic. “What should I do? Just come straight to you? It can’t happen all that often, or else people would know.”

“Report it to me,” Dobey said, “and I report to the council, and we report to...another council. It’ll be dealt with, as near to the American legal system as we can.”

“We’ll expand our kit,” Hutch explains softly, giving Starsky a small grin. “Since bullets don’t work on werewolves, they don’t work on a lot of other things. Don’t laugh, but there’s a handbook.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Starsky says, but he can see that Hutch isn’t. He makes a face, because he was sure he was done learning all the rules and regulations and restrictions, but now there were even more. “Okay so more studying. What else do I need to know?”

“Less that, and more what _we_ need to know,” said a smaller, balding man in glasses—about as far from a werewolf as Starsky could imagine—who opened up a notebook. “If you could answer just a few questions for us, Hutchinson and the handbook can answer any questions you have.”

The blonde woman nodded, and the balding man cleared his throat. “Name and current address, please?”

Starsky looks at Hutch for confirmation that this is necessary, though he doesn’t like giving out the information if only because he gets the distinct impression it’s so they can hunt him down if he crosses some line. “David Michael Starsky. I live in an apartment over a garage in the lower east. Captain Dobey knows my address, it’s where they send my paychecks.”

“Could you list all former residences, please?” the man asks, making Starsky scratch his head to remember all the places he’s lived. They ask for his rank and serial number from the army, and for where he went to school. They ask for names of his living relatives, but not their addresses, where Starsky may otherwise have drawn the line. When the man asks for character witnesses, however, Hutch jumps in.

“Hey, look. With all due respect, _I’m_ his character witness. We’ve known each other for years. We work and spend leisure time together. This isn’t a security background check, and if you’re going to run anyone through the wringer for screwing up, it’s gonna be me, all right?”

“Stand down, Hutch,” Dobey says, but Edith comes to his defense:

“I agree. I say we let Kenneth’s character witness stand in place of further questioning. I know both of these men, and they’re good boys. Any secret you need to tell them will be safe with them. It’s only because they spend so much time together and work so well together that Starsky found out about Hutch at all.” Edith and the blonde woman exchange a look, then, and the blonde nods.

“Agreed. Mr. Starsky, I’m sorry for this. We are grateful for you coming here, and for your discretion.”

“Well, as for those two things, I get the feeling I don’t have a lot of choice,” Starsky admits, pushing the line a little. “But your secret’s safe with me.”

The blonde woman smiles, perhaps finding Starsky cute. “Fair enough.”

He’d have gone along with just about anything, though he’s got no idea what the threat is if he hadn’t. When they’re dismissed, Starsky turns back to Hutch, and dips his head a little, obviously waiting for the blindfold to go back on before they make their way back to the car.

“Tell me something,” Starsky says, as he lets Hutch lead him back to the parking lot, “because if you don’t, it’s gonna eat at me. What would they have done if I hadn’t gone along with all that?”

Hutch is a little angry with how his friend was treated, and guides him with one hand hooked around his waist because it’s just short of hugging him, which is what he actually wants to do, and when he sits him into the passenger seat, he keeps his head well clear of the door.

“Well, they wouldn’t have eaten you,” Hutch says. “You’d’ve suddenly lost your job and gotten an offer somewhere else, where they could keep you out of trouble. They’d have someone keep an eye on you and probably wouldn’t like me to talk to you ever again.”

“Well, that just sucks,” Starsky says, with an earnest displeasure at the whole notion.

“Yeah.” Hutch reaches across the space between them and takes Starsky’s hand and squeezes it. “I’m glad you went along with it.”

Hutch starts the car with his left hand so he doesn’t have to let go immediately. He tries, conversationally, “You...didn’t tell me you had a brother. Not that you have to tell me anything. Just curious.”

“Well, we don’t always get along,” Starsky says. “Nick’s…well, he stayed with Ma when I moved out of the house to come stay with my Aunt out here. I think maybe Ma went a little overboard sometimes with how she indulged him. We talk, but only on holidays.”

Hutch huffs. “I feel like I should have known something like that.”

Starsky squeezes Hutch’s fingers. “It just never came up, that’s all.”

“Your dad wasn’t in the picture, at all?” Hutch asks next, and adds, again, “You don’t have to…”

“Not at that point,” Starsky says, sounding tired. “He was gone by then. He, uh, died when I was a kid. When Nick was just four. He was mixed up in some pretty bad stuff. I’ll tell you about it some time, but frankly it’s exhausting.”

Hutch winces. He and his father don’t have the best relationship, but at least he’s around. “I’m sorry, Starsk.”

Starsky turns a tired grin toward Hutch from behind the blindfold. “Besides, what’s it mattered? You had a few secrets too, and it’s not like that kept us from being friends. What Dobey says is right. We’re a good team.”

“Yeah, we are.” Hutch squeezes Starsky’s hand and then has to let it go to drive. “I’m ready to be a better one, frankly, without having to spend all my energy hiding an invisible dog from you.”

Once they’re a few blocks away, Hutch tugs the blindfold loose. “I don’t think we need that anymore. It’s kind of stupid, anyway. Bet you knew exactly where we were, and could ID all five of the councilmembers by the end of the day if you had to.”

“If they’d done their homework, they’d have known I went to high school there,” Starsky says, with a mischievous grin. “But I can pretend to be ignorant. Hey, what do you eat when you’re a wolf, anyway? Do you hunt stuff?”

Hutch laughs and submits to the questions—it’s only fair—and drives them through a taco stand for dinner. “Yeah, we hunt. Out here, it’s great, once we get out on the mesa, you know, we mainly aim for the wild pigs. Those things are mean, but they taste great. Or the wolf thinks so.”

“I think so too,” Starsky laughs, but he’s glad to have a taco, anyway, and it keeps him from asking any more questions as he chows down, until they go past his turn on the freeway. “You gonna drop me off, or am I staying on your couch again tonight?”

“Oh,” Hutch laughs, embarrassed. “I guess I thought—we can go to your place if you like, but I figured I owed you a few beers at least after that. I've got a pullout couch, or I'll pay for a taxi home…”

“No, it sounds good,” Starsky says, bandanna still loose around his neck. He leans back in the car seat, relaxed, stretching his feet out in the footwell. “I don’t mind the pullout, so long as no one’s gonna check up on where I’m supposed to be and get curious about why I’m not there.”

He yawns. “Though I can’t promise I’ll make it through more than one beer. It’s been a strange couple of nights.”

Hutch nods. “Tell me about it.”

But if they're tired going into the house, Hutch hits his second wind after consuming tacos, and the moon is still out, so he's actually feeling kind of restless and playful.

He surprises himself as much as Starsky by changing quite suddenly and easily, kicking off his clothes in a neat little pile and yipping in greeting as the wolf emerges. Starsky did want to see the wolf again, didn't he?

The wolf certainly wants to see Starsky again.

“You really can do that whenever you want, huh?” Starsky says, reaching down to help Hutch dislodge a stubborn sock. He still goes to the fridge for a beer, but there’s something almost magnetic about Hutch in this way, at least in the way he practically entices physical play, and Starsky gets down on the floor with him quite quickly after having a few sips of beer, tussling a lot more gently given how tired they both are.

Hutch seems to just enjoy leaning on Starsky, or totally flopping his weight down on him. No teeth, no claws, just pressure. Hutch has played with pups more roughly.

Hutch’s fur is extremely soft, dense and almost silky, and Starsky likes the feel of it in his hands, and how Hutch doesn’t really smell very doggy, the way some dogs did, and if they wrestle for a while before they both settle onto the couch so Starsky can finish his beer, comfortably running his hand over Hutch’s head and rubbing his ears and neck, it doesn’t feel as unnatural as it might otherwise. It’s like Starsky realizes the same separation of wolf-self and person-self that Hutch seems to display; they’re both tied into each other, aware of each other, but they don’t quite agree on what they want all the time.

“You know something?” Starsky says, with his guard all the way down and Hutch’s chin in his lap. “I didn’t think you could be any cuter than you were already the other way, but every time I’m sure about you, you prove me one better.”

Human Hutch, from somewhere, is startled by this admission, like a shy schoolgirl— _he thinks I'm cute?_ —but the wolf just preens, giving a pleased little sigh and licking a spot on the inside of Starsky’s elbow. He just loves the way Starsky’s hands feel buried in his fur. He shifts onto his back and rests his massive shaggy head up by Starsky’s hip so he can wriggle up closer, getting more of himself on Starsky. He doesn't have a dog smell, but Hutch knows he does have a smell, a wolf smell, and he wants it all over Starsky. He kind of wants Starsky's smell to be all over him, too.

Maybe he should change back into a person and discuss this. But maybe that can wait until morning, when he's cooking breakfast for his partner. Partner. That's a word that teases, doesn't it? The word _mate_ comes to mind, in the strange way the wolf is aware of human thought, how mate can mean best friend in certain human cultures, but to the wolf it means life and sex and love and forever.

Sometimes, the wolf does more thinking than the man.

Starsky’s hands are absent in their wanderings, finding the softest parts of his fur over Hutch’s chest and belly and rubbing until they’re both almost hypnotized. There’s a part of him that’s still getting over ‘wolf’; that base instinct human part of Starsky that exists instinctively in every appropriately socialized person. Wild animals are to be respected, they could do damage to you if they needed or wanted to. Hutch, however, isn’t a wild animal.

It’s comfortable. Starsky eases his arms around Hutch, making a mental note to ask later if this sort of liberty was okay, though Hutch leans into it until they’re both stretched out and comfortable on the couch, and Starsky is content to sleep just like that, warm and comfortable and with Hutch half on top of him and an ugly throw pillow under his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for this installment folks, but subscribe to the series for more adventures with Starsky and his partner werewolf Hutch! We'll meet supernatural!Huggy next time...any guesses as to what he is in this AU? ;)

**Author's Note:**

> A written-by-roleplay AU. Subscribe to the series for more adventures of Starsky & Werewolf!Hutch.


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